About Adele

I got Parker when I was 21. I trained him, groomed him and showed him, and he became the heart of my life. I knew him from the minute he was born – his mother, grandmother, father and siblings, and later many of his puppies. One of his daughters, Lily the Pink (“Pig” to us), was very special and lived with us for a long time.

Parker is where my love of hand stripping began. Alongside studying grooming at college, I learned from experienced breeders and through my own hands-on experience, and keeping Border Terriers like Parker in show coat taught me rolling and staging coats, patterns and how different coats behave. I actually stripped his mum before him, but he was one of my very first.

We showed from six months old and qualified for Crufts at about 18 months – then, the week before, he ate something he shouldn’t have and made himself poorly, so we never went! We tried agility, flyball and heelwork to music, but his true love was terrier racing. Mostly at game fairs, he beat lurchers and every other breed to become top champion. I even set up TT racing, with events like Dogs Unleashed for my grooming customers and friends.

Parker worked with me too – helping me assess dogs and work on anxiety and recall, keeping the dogs I walked company and teaching them right from wrong, and running beside my bike most afternoons.

He didn’t suffer fools and only really cared about me. Clever, a keen hunter, a true Border hole-digger, and he lost every coat I put on him. He fetched dropped grooming tools and the remote, emptied the washing machine, pulled my socks off and even stripped wallpaper. At the end of the day, he loved nothing more than curling up in my arms like a baby and falling asleep. He died at home with me.